Happy Halloween and a Blessed Samhain!!!

Wishing everyone a very Happy and safe Halloween and a Blessed Samhain!!!

Catching up and getting ready

Yesterday was about catching up around here! October sure is a busy month between birthdays, events, work and other fun things to do. We took the top hive box off this hive finally. We won't get any honey to sell this year as our hives are rebounding from last year's bear attack that wiped out everything forcing us to start all over again.

The chicken coops were cleaned well. This girl is coming in for an inspection. She's checking to see if it meets her standards.

Finally an egg! Our girls have been molting and have not laid much lately, hopefully we are turning a corner on this, our egg customers are getting ancy!!!!

Packing and organizing the bins for the Fiber Festival of New England next weekend, hope to see you there!

There is no such thing as a dyeing mistake!

With clean and dried Border Leicester on hand I set out to dye some colorways I had in mind. I had 3 pounds of wool and set out to get it dyed!

I filled the pot with some warm water and added my dyes. My goal here was to do a blue, green
and dark rose fractured blend. I added a small amount of blue and green and dominated the rose color leaving space between for it to bleed over. I've done this before and it worked!!! Well this time the rose was completely over come by the blue and green.

This pound was supposed to be black!!! I got beautiful tips of black but the dark rose color I set out to dye in the previous fleece.

Just look how this set up!!! I love it. Maybe not enough vinegar? Too much water but something didn't go right here or did it?

This is the fleece that was supposed to have have rose in it!!! 

So when combined I got the exact results I set out for, just in a different process. There are no dyeing mistakes, if the pot gives you lemons or so you think, look again, it is more than likely beautiful in someone else's eyes!! 

Yarning on!!!

I am so behind in posts! October tends to be a very busy time. So much going on and not a lot of time for other things. I got the Lincoln wool spun. Three pounds netted 360 yards of gorgeous yarn. I got this one  my yarn weasel. This weasel has a perfect 2 yard circumference and was hand made by my friends brother in law.

The colors on this is so beautiful.  I was going for colors of the sea.
I must say I am quite pleased!
Now onto more dyeing and spinning, great things to get done on a cool Autumn day! N

Morning Spinning

With just 24 days until the New England Fiber Festival, my feet have been busy spinning with projects on  couple of wheels. I am spinning Mohair, Lincoln Longwool, Border Leicester and in the picture above is some beautiful Merino!!! All these yarns as well as lots of other items will be at my booth. Come visit me, Naomi and PJ our English Angora rabbit!!!

Still going strong...

Offering a little extra food as things should be winding down...

With the end of beekeeping season closing in, it appears our bees did not get the memo. The last of the flowers are the asters which they are all over.

We lost 2 out of 4 hives in our attempt to rebound since last year's bear devastation. Our hives are filled with capped honey for them to eat through the winter.

Each hive looked like this...

A couple of baby bees peaking through and waiting to be capped. I am still seeing drones in the hives so they are not ready to say when quite yet.

It's all in the product!

I had this Border Leicester fleece that needed to be cleaned. I usually use Unicorn Fiber Wash...

I was running low and decided to buy more, but this time I purchased the Power Scour. I cannot say enough great things about this product! It will clean anything, and I mean anything! 

I added a few drops to this piece, lathered it lightly, rinsed and this was my results!

This was not the dirtiest fleece I have ever had but it was dirty...

But after a bath in the Unicorn Power Scour and  few rinses, it's beautifully clean. It really is all in the product. I don't find dish soap nearly as effective as the Unicorn wash line. This product is worth its weight in gold!!!

Prepping wool for spinning

Not all fibers are prepped the same way. Often they can be combed, spun from the locks or if you are lucky to have it mill prepped, it will make the process faster. Above is some of the hand dyed Lincoln wool I did earlier.

What I found with the Lincoln wool is that you really need to pull it apart into almost a frizzy frenzy. I also combed it with a hand carder. There is a lot of lanolin in this wool so it needs to be prepped properly. 

When it is prepped properly it spins up amazingly! 

This is a lovely, strong yarn but the most wonderful part is the colors and the softness. 

The young and the old bee

I was watching the honeybees yesterday on the Autumn  Joy Sedum. I took this picture because it shows two phases of the foragers. The bee on the bottom is a younger forager while the bee on the top is older. You ask how could I know this? As a honeybee ages, she looses the hairs on the top of her thorax plate. This is often an indicator of age of a honeybee. A honeybee becomes a forager at about the half way point of her life. Our honeybees are extremely busy collecting all they can.

Results to "Dye" for!

Sadly the pictures don't come close to the results. Cameras just can't pick up the quality of the color and the variant blends.In the picture above, I wanted to blend the colors of the sea. As summer is coming to a close, my best time spent this summer was at the beach so I wanted to create a fleece in those colors, and I did! 

This portion of the 9 pound Lincoln fleece was dyed in shades of purples and lavenders. The blends and the locks came out amazing!

This fleece was black with a heavy dose of reds which ultimately resulted in a deep and variegated burgundy color. When I saw the results it remind me of a dress a saloon singer would have worn in the good old wild wild west.

In this fleece I wanted a lot of pastels. The light blue bled with some other colors and you can see the only small amount that came through in the middle right of the picture. The softness of this fleece is so nice and the variance of the colors down the locks is beautiful too!

This final fleece was my favorite! The colors remind me of a carpet bag set in Victorian times! I used at least 7 different dyes in this one and they blended beautifully! Once again soft and easy to get the just right colors!
Now to begin some spinning as the weather is a cool early fall here in Connecticut.

That Dye Pot time of year

The weather here in Connecticut has been cool and beautiful. Perfect dyeing weather for boiling dye pots. With the 9 pounds of Lincoln wool I cleaned it was time to begin dyeing and getting ready for the fall shows.

I have pretty much switched over to Pro Chem dyes. Their colors are warm and dye perfect. The color holds so nice and their selections of colors are limitless. 

I was going good for the colors of the sea and I was quite pleased. Once the fleeces are dried I will post the finished results.

Most of the batches I dyed fractioning the dyes which gives not only different colors but as its absorbed different shades as well

While still drying, this fleece has different variants of purples and lavenders.

While boiling it tends to look like a hot mess, but the end results are amazing.

This fleece while still drying reminded me of a Victorian woman's dress. Using black and burgundy shades, I look at it and am taken back to a simpler time.

Once again, fractioning the dyes, results with 6 different dyes

So fleeces are still drying, the variant of color came out quite nice. Once dry I will post the results of the fleeces. 

Working through the wool stash

Now that summer is winding down, it's time to get into the wool stash and begin washing, processing, dyeing and spinning. I'm beginning to see a problem around here with a room, basement and barn filled with wool and fiber bags.

The locks are beautiful, long and soft.

The lanolin in this wool is amazing. The water is literally beading off my hand as I worked and washed the wool

The water was the color of coffee as I began to wash it with a wool wash soap. It took about 4 rinses to begin running clear.

This is what 9 pounds of Lincoln wool looks like as it drys. Now to put some thoughts into some colorways and get busy!

Predator and Prey

You just cannot have farming without the constant threat of predators. That threat happened here yesterday with a hawk attack on ours as well as our neighbors chickens. Just as I heard the warning get calls from the roosters I quickly slipped on my shoes and spun around in time to see a red shoulder hawk come right down on this pretty girl above. As I was running our dog Autumn was right on the situation. The hawk had dragged her into a bunch of pricker bushes. Autumn couldn't get to it but I jumped in, the hawk released and flew off to our neighbors yard and grabbed one of their chickens! We quickly ran over and got the chicken away, she flew up into a tree and Autumn paced and barked. Our neighbor came out to the scene and quickly began hazing methods to get the hawk to fly off. Both chickens are fine but a little traumatized over their ordeal.

I just don't know what I would do without my side kick. She has prevented more attacks than I can count. A street dog we adopted a few years ago has become our greatest tool in the never ending predator and Prey struggle.